Probate - how long?

SnowMan

And here is my chart from that data of the average wait times over time for digital/paper, stopped/non stopped grants issued up to November 2024.

durks

Just to mention that I submitted an application for Confirmation (i.e. Probate up here in Scotland) at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court in person in mid November 2024, and subsequently received the completed Grant of Confirmation in early January 2025. So the entire process was unexpectedly speedy.

The staff at the Court were helpful and kind.

I hope that might be of help to other people who need to do the same thing.

Crazy_Badger

Just about to submit so thank you for this SnowMan 👌🏻 

Crazy_Badger

Further to this..

Online submission, excepted estate, will in the post on Friday and delivered to the probate office on Monday. 

Notification on the portal that delays of upto four weeks to get documents scanned and associated with cases so wasn’t expecting much. 

Following Thursday - two emails:
1) document scanned and, 15 mins later
2) probate had been granted!

mentally fast. Just waiting for the physical copy to appear now. 

dkay5701

I'm about to send mine off for my Dad tomorrow so will keep the forum updated.  

Sadly I went through the same process for my Mum 18 months ago and the timescale was the following:

20/11/2023 application sent
29/11/2023 documents received email
14/01/2024 probate granted.

This was fast at the time but it looks like it is getting quicker for the grant so hopefully no issues.  Both applications were below IHT threshold.

Returner

I submitted an application on Monday 27th January. Simple excepted estate with property and assets going to children. Filed online. Probate granted on Friday 31st January so 4 days. I keep having to go back to my online account to check I didn't dream it! It will be interesting to see how long the grant takes to arrive in the post. 

Swiss_Danny67

Returner said:

I submitted an application on Monday 27th January. Simple excepted estate with property and assets going to children. Filed online. Probate granted on Friday 31st January so 4 days. I keep having to go back to my online account to check I didn't dream it! It will be interesting to see how long the grant takes to arrive in the post. 

Same here. Online application as sole executor, excepted estate (just) late on Thu 23/1, posted will on Fri. Email confirming receipt on Wed 29/1 and five minutes later email confirming grant. Originals arrived Fri 31/1. The manager at the building society said someone else had just had three day turnaround.

dkay5701

All done!  That was ridiculously fast.

29/01/2025 - Documents sent
31/01/2025 - Signed for on Royal Mail
05/02/2025 - Email saying documents received (1140)
05/02/2025 - Email saying probate approved. (1240)

Arrived at HMCTS on Friday and approved by Wednesday.  

SnowMan

Here are the HMCTS December probate wait times https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/hmcts-management-information-december-2024 published yesterday. The table has been created by me from the data.  The monthly update data is published on the second Thursday of each month, so the January data comes out in March. Overall there were 20,254 applications received in December and 22,733 grants issued.

In last month's update I mentioned that they actually issued (slightly) fewer grants than grants were received in November (23,618 issued vs 23,694 received). However they seem to have now revised November's figures to 23,618 issued and 23,179 received so that's no longer the case.

SnowMan

And here is my chart from that data of the average wait times over time for digital/paper, stopped/non stopped grants issued up to December 2024. 

Note the slight increase in the overall paper rate is because the proportion of grants issued that have been stopped cases rather than non stopped cases has been higher than previous months; the average wait times for stopped paper cases and not stopped paper cases have both decreased slightly.